Abdominal surgery typically involves an incision in the abdominal wall large enough to accommodate a surgeon's hands, multiple instruments, and illumination of the body cavity. While large incisions simplify access to the body cavity during a surgery, it also increases trauma, requires extended recovery time, and can result in unsightly scars. In response to these drawbacks, minimally invasive surgical methods have been developed.
In minimally invasive abdominal surgery, or laparoscopic surgery, several smaller incisions are made into the abdominal wall. One of the openings is used to inflate the abdominal cavity with gas, which lifts the abdominal wall away from underlying organs and provides space to perform the desired surgery. This process is referred to as insufflation of the body cavity. Additional openings may be used to accommodate cannulas or trocars for illuminating and viewing the cavity, as well as instruments involved in actually performing the surgery, e.g., instruments to manipulate, cut, or resect organs and tissue.
Hand Assisted Laparoscopic Surgical (HALS) procedures are gaining increased acceptance as combining advantages of open surgery (e.g., tactile feedback) yet have some of the advantages of reduced scarring, reduced recovery time, and reduced incidence of complications of closed procedures. Laparoscopic disks are often used to provide an adjustable opening that allows insertion of the surgeon's hand to the insufflated body cavity, yet provide significant pneumatic sealing with or without the presence of the surgeon's hand.
While generally-known laparoscopic disks successfully support HALS procedures, improvements to increase patient and surgeon comfort and to enhance performance are desired.